Unless you live in a cave — which, come to think of it, might not be a bad idea for hard-core global warming preppers — then you have heard about the pre-documentary that ran on the SyFy channel last night, “Sharknado.”

So exclaims a local TV news reporter as a sharknado—a climate-change-abetted windstorm that sucks in an armada of malevolent sharks—approaches the heart of Los Angeles.

Based on my conversations with leading climate scientists, it seems premature at best for a pre-documentary to pre-attribute an individual sharknado to climate change. I examined the climate/tornado link in great detail here and concluded:

When discussing extreme weather and climate, tornadoes should not be conflated with the other extreme weather events for which the connection is considerably more straightforward and better documented, including deluges, droughts, and heat waves.

Just because the tornado-warming link is more tenuous doesn’t mean that the subject of global warming should be avoided entirely when talking about tornadoes.

Significantly, Harold Brooks, a senior scientist at NOAA’s National Severe Storms Laboratory, told the media this week, “There are records of small fish being picked up by waterspouts, but sharks are pretty big and that makes it a lot harder.”

This suggests that if there ever is a sharknado, global warming probably played a role in creating convection and winds capable of entraining a significant number of sharks.

This footage underscores that point:

I should note that I myself didn’t actually see “Sharknado.” I am still too busy binge-watching that disturbing multi-part documentary, “Breaking Bad,” which if nothing else has convinced me I made a good choice in becoming a physicist, since chemists just don’t seem like very nice people.

Finally, while individual sharknados may or may not ultimately be attributable to global warming, you can’t deny the impact of a film that drew “over 5,000 tweets per minute” at one point, according to Fox News, which, unsurprisingly, omitted any discussion of global warming in its story. That’s why I’m inclined to agree with the recommendation of the LA Times:

So forget “An Uncomfortable Truth.” Environmental activists need to set up screenings of “Sharknado.” My fellow Americans, is this the legacy we want to leave our children? A shark on every rooftop?

Something for Bill McKibben and League of Conservation Voters and Organizing For Action to think about.

UPDATE: EPA has put out the following tweet:

#Climate change may lead to rising sea levels & more intense storms, but currently no science to support the occurrence of a #Sharknado.

Joe, many chemists are actually quite nice (of course). In particular, here is one you might try to meet: Marinda Wu, who is the President of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

I’ve met Dr. Wu, briefly, and also corresponded with her at one point regarding climate change. She is deeply concerned about climate change, and the ACS also has a great position statement regarding climate change. Indeed, based on a quick look at what their website is currently featuring, two of their five keynote/plenary speakers for the upcoming ACS annual convention have to do with solar energy.

Also, as you probably know, the ACS is headquartered not far from you folks, on Sixteenth St. NW.

As far as major professional societies go, if you want to include one or try to “partner” with one — formally or informally — regarding climate change and (perhaps) getting political leaders to take it much more seriously, the ACS would probably be a great bet, especially while Ms. Wu is president. That said, a previous president was also deeply concerned about climate change, and serious about it. (I met him at an energy and ethics conference long ago, and even then the ACS had a great position statement regarding climate change.) So, my experience with the ACS, limited as it has been, is that the ACS as an institution is appropriately concerned about climate change. But, perhaps, someone in the climate movement has to do a better job of trying to catalyze some cooperation and joint initiatives, or at least joint statements, among the serious professional organizations and scientific societies. Such efforts haven’t reached critical mass and, I guess, haven’t been emphatic and creative enough to garner the necessary attention.

What about “Piranhacane” a Cat 5 amalgam of teeth and terror! A flick that will scare both orthodontists and meteorologists. A cinematic masterpiece that will add some bite into storm surge models. Dentists and fanboys all over exclaim, “A true brush with bad oral hygiene”!

Let this film be a warning to any aliens who are planning to invade this planet! They’re flying right up fin alley — the grand fin alley, that is.

(Anybody remember the 50’s B&W movie “THEM!” about the giant ants that crawled out of the L.A. Sewer system after a nuke test? You can still check out the trailer on YouTube if you need something to do this weekend.)

Thanks Joe,
I enjoyed the revealing of subtle motivations of bad behavior in the mentioned tv show. Or is it the good behavior in really bad situations. The balance though seems tilted to the dark side.

Usually I lean a tad toward humorlessness with such, er, “stuff” as “Sharknado.”

But that trailer was so over the top that laughter was the only possible response–maybe partly because it’s such a great (and self-parodying) example of the Hollywood exploitation flick:

“Really, it’s a deceptively tough feat that the makers of Sharknado pulled off: making a movie that’s shlockily and campily hilarious without seeming to try too hard to make something shlockily and campily hilarious.”

As a chemist who regularly reads your blog, Joe, I was shocked at the broad-brush stereotyping you’ve engaged in here. Everyone knows that it the organic chemists who are the nasty people. The rest of us are some the nicest people you’d ever want to meet.

The boy wonder has just got me started on Breaking Bad Season One, and it seems to me it’s really chem teachers that are the problem:

“You wouldn’t cook crystal meth in one of these. A volumetric flask is for general mixing and titration. You wouldn’t apply heat to a volumetric flask! That’s what a boiling flask is for. Did you learn nothing from my chemistry class?”
LOL.